Pachachi called for the UN "Security Council, the government of the big powers and Arab countries to take the necessary measures to put in place a provisional UN administration", following the ouster of President Saddam Hussein.

This administration would "pave the way to the establishment of an interim national administration which will win the trust of the people, protect national sovereignty and restore normal life", he said.

The call was issued in a statement entitled "stop the thefts and looting, and respect the security of citizens and the property of the state", a copy of which was obtained by AFP.

Co-signed by three other prominent Iraqis, Adib al-Jader, Mehdi al-Hafez and Walid Khaddouri, it stressed that "the foreign forces present in Iraq are fully responsible for the security of citizens as well as public and private property".

Pachachi, 80, who has lived in exile since 1970, was the only Sunni Muslim offered a seat on a six-member leadership council set up at a meeting of major opposition groups held in Kurdish-held northern Iraq in February.

The others were from the majority Shiite Muslim community and Kurds.

But Pachachi, who is based in the United Arab Emirates capital of Abu Dhabi and also spends time in London, spurned the offer.

He went on instead to rally liberal Iraqi "independents", announcing the birth of Independent Iraqis for Democracy at a conference attended by some 300 Iraqi exiles in the British capital last month.

Pachachi, who served as foreign minister from 1965 to 1967 and whose father was prime minister before the 1958 coup which toppled the monarchy in Iraq, had a stint with Iraqi opposition politics in the late 1990s.

He and other like-minded moderates set up a Democratic Centrist Current in London. The grouping tried to unify the Iraqi opposition, but its efforts failed.

SPACE.WIRE